Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman said at the UN Forum on Sustainable Development on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines should be accessible to all countries and announced Croatia would advocate global solidarity in the response to the pandemic in the UN Economic and Social Council.

On Friday, Grlic-Radman participated via video link in the event marking the 75th anniversary of the UN Economic and Social Council within the EU High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, Croatia’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs said.

No country can face the COVID-19 crisis on its own. Safe and effective vaccines, as well as diagnostics and treatment, should be easily accessible to everyone, in a fast and sustainable way and without any form of discrimination.

On 7 June 2021, Croatia was elected to the Economic and Social Council for the third time, for the period 2022-2024, and in 2002 Croatia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ivan Simonović, was the president of the Council.

Grlic-Radman announced that Croatia was ready to make its contribution in its future work, as a member of the Council in the period 2022-2024, so that the Council could provide a strong multilateral response to the pandemic, in the spirit of global solidarity and partnership.

In 2002 we faced many challenges but we also made progress in many important areas, such as peacebuilding and conflict prevention, cooperation with international financial and trade institutions and active participation in decision-making at international conferences and summits. Many issues from that time are still open and Croatia has continued to work on them within the UN. Croatia, for example, together with Afghanistan, coordinated the General Assembly Resolution on a Comprehensive and Coordinated Response to the Coronavirus Disease Pandemic, the minister said.

The minister stressed that the Council’s success should not be measured in the number of adopted resolutions but in actual changes that are achieved through their implementation. He said that great progress had been made in the Council’s work but that even greater flexibility and interactive cooperation of all stakeholders within the UN system were needed in the future so that no one would be left out, the press release read.